The increased number and public profile of individuals transitioning coincided with second-wave feminism, and so most of the first statements and books were written in the 1970s, with reference mainly to people then known as male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals, and now called trans women.

In 1973, Robin Morgan gave the keynote speech at the West Coast Lesbian Conference in Los Angeles, in which she starkly criticized transgender folksinger Beth Elliott.

I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.[4]

In The Transsexual Empire, Janice Raymond includes sections on Sandy Stone, a trans woman who had worked as a sound engineer for Olivia Records, and Christy Barsky, accusing both of creating divisiveness in women's spaces.[5] Biologist Ruth Hubbard criticized these writings as personal attacks on these individuals.[6]

Robert Jensen has outlined feminist[7] and ecological concerns[8] about transgender ideology, and connected that ideology to a larger cultural fear of the feminist critique of patriarchy.[9]

In 1977 Gloria Steinem expressed disapproval that the heavily publicized transition of tennis player Renée Richards (a trans woman) had been characterized as "a frightening instance of what feminism could lead to" or as "living proof that feminism isn't necessary". Steinem wrote, "At a minimum, it was a diversion from the widespread problems of sexual inequality."[10]

In 2017, with regard to the question of whether trans women are women, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie expressed the view that "trans women are trans women." She acknowledged transgender women face discrimination on the basis of being transgender and sees this as a serious issue, but also said that "we should not conflate the gender experiences of trans women with that of women born female." [11] After sustaining severe criticism for her views, Adichie opined that the American Left is "creating its own decline" and is "very cannibalistic." She explained that she sees trans women as women despite her views, but stood behind her position.[12]

Steineim wrote that, while she supported the right of individuals to identify as they choose, in many cases, transgender people "surgically mutilate their own bodies" in order to conform to a gender role that is inexorably tied to physical body parts. She concludes that "feminists are right to feel uncomfortable about the need for and uses of transsexualism." The article concluded with what became one of Steinem's most famous quotes: "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?" Although meant in the context of transgender issues, the quote is frequently mistaken as a general statement about feminism.[10] Steinem's statements led to her being characterized as transphobic for some years.[13] In a 2013 interview with The Advocate, she repudiated the interpretation of her text as an altogether condemnation of sex reassignment surgery, stating that her position was informed by accounts of gay men choosing to transition as a way of coping with societal homophobia. She added that she sees transgender people as living "authentic lives" that should be "celebrated."[14]

In 1979, Janice Raymond wrote a book on trans women called The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, which looked at the role of transsexuality–particularly psychological and surgical approaches to it—in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes, the ways in which the "medical-psychiatric complex" is medicalizing "gender identity", and the social and political context that has helped spawn transsexual treatment and surgery as normal and therapeutic medicine.[15] Raymond maintains that transsexualism is based on the "patriarchal myths" of "male mothering", and "making of woman according to man's image". She claims this is done in order "to colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality," adding: "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive."[16] Several writers have characterized these views as extremely transphobic, and indeed constituting hate speech.[17][18][19][20]

In her 1987 book Gyn/Ecology,Mary Daly asserted her negative view of sex change operations, writing, "Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent . . . in . . . phallocratic technology. . . . Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes."[21] "Transsexualism, which Janice Raymond has shown to be essentially a male problem, is an attempt to change males into females, whereas in fact no male can assume female chromosomes and life history/experience."[22] "The surgeons and hormone therapists of the transsexual kingdom . . . can be said to produce feminine persons. They cannot produce women."[23]

In 1999, in the book The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer published a sequel to The Female Eunuch. One chapter was titled "Pantomime Dames", wherein she states her opposition to accepting trans women who were assigned male at birth as women:

Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males.[24]

More recently, Julie Bindel wrote several articles critical of sex reassignment surgery, transsexualism and transgender issues. Bindel's first published article on transsexualism appeared in The Guardian, in May 2007; it was the first example of coverage of a narrative of 'transsexual regret' in the UK media. Bindel interviewed 'Claudia', a post-operative transsexual, who regretted her decision to have surgery and felt that the psychiatrist involved did not take sufficient care in reaching a diagnosis. Bindel questioned the medical approach in the article.[25]

In 1997 Sheila Jeffreys published a paper that stated that ""transgenderism" is... deeply problematic from a feminist perspective and that transsexualism should be seen as a violation of human rights".[26] In 2012 she wrote in The Guardian that she and others who "criticised transgenderism, from any academic discipline," had been subjected to internet campaigns to ban their speaking because of alleged "transhate, transphobia, hate speech". She writes that the "degree of vituperation and the energy expended by the activists may suggest that they fear the practice of transgenderism could justifiably be subjected to criticism, and might not stand up to rigorous research and debate, if critics were allowed to speak out."[27] Jeffreys is co-author with Lorene Gottschalk of the 2013 book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism.[28]

Greer was glitter bombed in a protest against these views at a 2012 book signing in Wellington, New Zealand by a group known as the Queer Avengers.[29] A piece by Bindel titled "Gender Benders, beware" was printed in The Guardian concerning her anger about a rape crisis centre's dispute with a transsexual rape counselor; the article also expressed her views about transsexuals and transsexualism.[30] Many considered the language used to be offensive and demeaning. The Guardian received more than two hundred letters of complaint from transgender people, doctors, therapists, academics and others. Transgender activist group Press for Change cite this article as an example of 'discriminatory writing' about transsexual people in the press.[31] Complaints focused on the title, "Gender benders, beware", the cartoon[32] accompanying the piece,[33] and the disparaging tone, such as "Think about a world inhabited just by transsexuals. It would look like the set of Grease" and "I don't have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s [jeans] does not make you a man."[30]

As of 2009, Bindel reportedly still maintained that "people should question the basis of the diagnosis of male psychiatrists, 'at a time when gender polarisation and homophobia work hand-in-hand.'"[34] She argued that "Iran carries out the highest number of sex change surgeries in the world" (see Transsexuality in Iran) and that "surgery is an attempt to keep gender stereotypes intact".[34] Bindel responded to the protest in a piece in the Guardian which covered the way the LGBT movement had developed since her early days as a radical lesbian feminist. She suggested that the protest was as much about "Stonewall for refusing to add the T (for transsexual) on to the LGB (for lesbian, gay and bisexual)."[35] and that "the idea that certain distinct behaviours are appropriate for males and females underlies feminist criticism of the phenomenon of 'transgenderism'."[34] Following the Stonewall protest Whittle invited her to debate these issues again with Susan Stryker, an academic and transexual activist from the USA, in front of an audience at Manchester Metropolitan University on 12 December 2008. The debate was broadcast live on the internet.

When Linda Bellos was invited to speak at Cambridge University, she told the organizers that she would be "publicly questioning some of the trans politics...which seems to assert the power of those who were previously designated male to tell lesbians, and especially lesbian feminists, what to say and think."[36] She was subsequently disinvited from speaking. Asked by The Times for comment, Bellos reiterated: "I’m not being told by someone who a few months ago was a man what I as a woman can or cannot do."

Claire Heuchan, writing for The Guardian, lamented the university's decision to disinvite Bellos, opining: "When feminists who have spent decades challenging sexism, racism, and homophobia are viewed as a risk to the wellbeing of students, something has gone very wrong indeed."[37]

Some feminists argue that trans women cannot be counted as women because they were not born biologically female.[4][38] They hold that trans women have enjoyed male privilege by virtue of being assigned male at birth and their insistence on acceptance is a type of male entitlement.[4] Radical feminists reject the notion of a female brain. They believe that the differences in behavior between men and women are a result of different socialization and believe that – in the words of Lierre Keith – femininity is "ritualized submission".[39] In this view, gender is less an identity than a caste position and transgenderism is an obstacle to gender abolition.[4][38]

Transgender women such as Sandy Stone challenged the feminist conception of "biological woman". Stone worked as a sound engineer for Olivia Records from about 1974 to 1978, resigning as the controversy over a trans woman working for a lesbian-identified enterprise increased.[40][dead link] The debate continued in Raymond's book,[41] which devoted a chapter to criticism of "the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist". Groups like Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) then voted to exclude trans lesbians[42] and include only womyn-born womyn. A formal request to join the organization was made by a trans lesbian in 1978; in response, the organization voted to exclude trans women. During informal discussion, members of L.O.O.T. expressed their outrage that in their view a "sex-change he-creature...dared to identify himself as a woman and a lesbian." In their public response, LOOT wrote, "A woman's voice was almost never heard as a woman's voice – it was always filtered through men's voices. So here a guy comes along saying, "I'm going to be a girl now and speak for girls." And we thought, 'No you're not.' A person cannot just join the oppressed by fiat."[42]

Another site of conflict between feminists and trans women was the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MichFest). It ejected a transgender woman, Nancy Burkholder, in the early 1990s.[43] Since then, the festival has maintained that it is intended for "womyn-born womyn" only.[44] The activist group Camp Trans formed to protest this policy and to advocate for greater acceptance of trans women within the feminist community. A number of prominent transgender activists and transfeminists were involved in Camp Trans including Riki Wilchins, Jessica Xavier, and Leslie Feinberg.[citation needed] MichFest considered allowing post-operative trans women to attend; however, this was criticized as classist, as many trans women cannot afford sex reassignment surgery.[45] Lisa Vogel, the MichFest organizer, said that protesters from Camp Trans responded to the ejection of Burkholder with vandalism.[4][38] The festival ended in 2015.

A similarly long-running dispute occurred in Canada, also involving access to women-only space. Kimberly Nixon volunteered for training as a rape crisis counselor at Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter in 1995. When Nixon's trans status was determined, she was expelled. The staff decided that Nixon's status made it impossible for her to understand the experiences of their clients, and required their clients to be genetically female. Nixon disagreed, disclosing her own history of partner abuse and sued on the grounds of discrimination. Nixon's attorneys argued that there was no basis for the dismissal, citing Diana Courvant's experiences as the first publicly trans woman to work in a women-only domestic violence shelter. In 2007 the Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear Nixon's appeal, ending the case.[46][47][48]

Germaine Greer was appointed as a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she unsuccessfully opposed the election to a fellowship of her transgender colleague Rachael Padman. Greer argued that Padman had been born male, and therefore should not be admitted to Newnham, a women's college. Greer resigned in 1996 after the case attracted negative publicity. An article concerning the incident was published on 25 June 1997 by Clare Longrigg of The Guardian. Entitled "A Sister with No Fellow Feeling"; it disappeared from websites after print publication, on the instruction of the newspaper's lawyers.[49][50][51]

Trans theorists argue that it is transphobic to exclude trans women from female-only spaces, women's political movements, or the definition of "woman".[52] Many who do so refer to feminists holding such views as trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or "TERFs". Cristan Williams from The Transadvocate has listed criteria pertaining to what she considers "TERF ideology".[53]

The neologism was coined by an inclusive radical feminist online space in 2008 as a way to distinguish between trans-supportive or trans-neutral radical feminists and those who wished to exclude trans women from their feminism. The progenitor of the term, the cisgender feminist Viv Smythe said, “It was meant to be a deliberately technically neutral description of an activist grouping. We wanted a way to distinguish TERFs from other RadFems with whom we engaged who were trans*-positive/neutral, because we had several years of history of engaging productively/substantively with non-TERF RadFems.”[54]

In February 2017, the opening of the Vancouver Women's Library was met with protests and harassment by a group of people who complained about the library including books which they deemed to contain "TERF" ideology.[58] On September 13, 2017, some members of a transgender activist counterprotest were involved in a physical altercation with Maria MacLachlan, a participant in a feminist gathering at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London.[59] Meghan Murphy, founder of Canadian website Feminist Current, opined afterwards that "TERF" is not only a slur but a form of hate speech, pointing at the number of transgender activists and sympathizers who were defending or even celebrating the physical assault against MacLachlan on the grounds that she was allegedly a "TERF".[3]

Sarah Ditum, writing for the New Statesman, noted how "TERF" became a mainstream slur after initially starting out as what was mostly an Internet buzzword.[60]

Claire Heuchan, criticizing the deplatforming of Linda Bellos from Cambridge University on grounds of her perceived transphobia, said that "TERF" is often used alongside violent rhetoric, and used to dehumanize women who are critical of gender.[61] She also added that the term obscures who is responsible for violence against transgender people: "The term “Terf” and the violent rhetoric that often accompanies it only serve to obscure the reality: women and trans people alike are targets of male violence. To make radical feminists the villains is to blame men’s violence on women’s thoughts."

We are, clearly, a multi-sexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete.

Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating

In Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, published in 1974, radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin called for the support of transsexuals, whom she viewed as "in a state of primary emergency" due to "the culture of male–female discreteness". Dworkin asserted that "every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions." She further opined that the phenomenon of transsexuality might disappear in a free society, giving way to new modes of sexual identity and behavior.[62]

In a 2014 interview, Judith Butler argued for civil rights for trans people: "[N]othing is more important for transgender people than to have access to excellent health care in trans-affirmative environments, to have the legal and institutional freedom to pursue their own lives as they wish, and to have their freedom and desire affirmed by the rest of the world." Moreover, she responded to some of Sheila Jeffreys and Janice Raymond's criticisms of trans people, calling their criticisms "prescriptivism" and "tyranny." According to Butler, trans people are not created by medical discourse but rather develop new discourses through self-determination.[66]

Robert Hill defines a more recent development, "Transfeminism" (also written "trans feminism"), as "a category of feminism, most often known for the application of transgender discourses to feminist discourses, and of feminist beliefs to transgender discourse".[67] Hill says that transfeminism also concerns its integration within mainstream feminism. He defines transfeminism in this context as a type of feminism "having specific content that applies to transgender and transsexual people, but the thinking and theory of which is also applicable to all women".

^ abGoldberg, Michelle (August 4, 2014). "What Is a Woman?". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 20, 2015. TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” The term can be useful for making a distinction with radical feminists who do not share the same position, but those at whom it is directed consider it a slur.

^ abMeghan E. Murphy (September 21, 2017). "'TERF' isn't just a slur, it's hate speech". Feminist Current. If “TERF” were a term that conveyed something purposeful, accurate, or useful, beyond simply smearing, silencing, insulting, discriminating against, or inciting violence, it could perhaps be considered neutral or harmless. But because the term itself is politically dishonest and misrepresentative, and because its intent is to vilify, disparage, and intimidate, as well as to incite and justify violence against women, it is dangerous and indeed qualifies as a form of hate speech. While women have tried to point out that this would be the end result of “TERF” before, they were, as usual, dismissed. We now have undeniable proof that painting women with this brush leads to real, physical violence. If you didn’t believe us before, you now have no excuse.

^Vasquez, Tina (February 17, 2014). "It's Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women". Bitch Media. Retrieved April 18, 2014. Steinem was long considered transphobic because of the stance she took in writing about professional tennis player Renée Richards, who transitioned in the 1970’s. Steinem’s 1983 book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion cited Janice Raymond’s work and discussed how transsexuals “mutilate their own bodies.”

^Steinem, Gloria (October 2, 2013). "On Working Together Over Time". The Advocate. Years passed the Internet arrived, and words circulated out of time and context. Last year one young transgender student on campus assumed that old essay’s use of the word “mutilate” for surgeries performed because of societal pressure meant I was against sexual reassignment surgery altogether. He didn’t consider that it had been written two generations before he was born, and also in the context of global protests against routine surgical assaults, called female genital mutilation by some survivors.

So now I want to be unequivocal in my words: I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of “masculine” or “feminine” and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.

^Raymond, Janice G. (1994). The transsexual empire : the making of the she-male (Reissued with a new introduction on transgender ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. ISBN0807762725.

^Keith, Lierre (21–23 June 2013). "The Emperor's New Penis". CounterPunch. Retrieved 27 August 2014. Female socialization is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as "grooming"—to create a class of compliant victims. Femininity is a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission.

^Raymond, J. (1994). The Transsexual Empire (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press. The second edition includes a new foreword that describes her anti-trans work after the publication of her thesis project as the first edition in the late 70s.

^ abRoss, Becki (1995). The House that Jill Built: A Lesbian Nation in Formation. University of Toronto Press, ISBN978-0-8020-7479-9

^Van Gelder, Lindsy; and Pamela Robin Brandt. "The Girls Next Door: Into the Heart of Lesbian America", p. 73. Simon and Schuster, ISBN978-0-684-83957-8

^ abVasquez, Tina (February 17, 2014). "It's Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women". Bitch Media. Retrieved April 18, 2014. Drawing from that history, Brennan, fellow attorney Elizabeth Hungerford, and other modern-day feminists continue to actively question the inclusion of trans people in women’s spaces. These feminists refer to themselves as “radical feminists” or “gender critical feminists.” In 2008, trans women and trans advocates started referring to this group as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” or TERFs, a term Brennan considers a slur.

^Hungerford, Elizabeth (2–4 August 2013). "Sex is Not Gender". CounterPunch. Retrieved 10 August 2014. Make no mistake, this is a slur. TERF is not meant to be explanatory, but insulting. These characterizations are hyperbolic, misleading, and ultimately defamatory. They do nothing but escalate the vitriol and fail to advance the conversation in any way.

^Sarah Ditum (July 29, 2014). "How 'TERF' works". Feminist Current. Am I a TERF? West didn't have the time to check: avoiding any association with a tainted form of feminism took precedence over sharing a message about domestic violence. And she acted perfectly rationally in this: to associate herself with me, even by merely RTing a statement she agreed with, could be enough to make her a "known TERF" in turn and lead to her being similarly denounced in public. But note the end result of this: a feminist has withdrawn support for another feminist speaking against male violence, because a man told her to.